Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Barbie got a bad rap

I used to spend hours playing with Barbie. HOURS. I might even go so far as to say days when you consider I would go to bed with my “town” intact ready to pick right back up the next morning. I had Barbie and Ken and Skipper and Barbie’s friends. Heck I even had Barbie’s Afghan Hound. And trust me when I say the first time I saw one of those in real life (30 odd years later walking down a Manhattan sidewalk) it was like I was 7 again. Tossed right back into the middle of my make believe wonderland.

And it was a magical place. Barbie was happy. She had great friends, a cute boyfriend, she took trips on the Barbie plane. Sometimes she was a passenger, sometimes she was a flight attendant. She had a fun car and drove around with her friends laughing. She dreamed big and had plans for the future. Maybe she had hard times too, I don’t remember. I also don’t remember EVER holding Barbie up and thinking to myself, “this is what I should look like.” And for the record I am not blonde or 6 foot 10 or whatever the naysayers have calculated her out to be in real life. Playing with Barbie had no detrimental impact on my self image as a woman as some would like to argue. Instead, it stoked the fires of my imagination and creativity. Heck, I would still play with Barbies all day long if life allowed it. It’s fun. So can we leave the building of self worth in our children to the rightful owners (parents I am talking to you) and stop pointing fingers at a plastic, inanimate object with flowing blonde locks, cause that’s my girl, and I am fiercely loyal to my girls.